9 Tales Told in the Dark 17 Read online

  This time it was her turn to laugh and this she did boisterously, threatening to never end. This was all too much for Dalby Willmott. As Grant finally reached the top of the stairs and peeked around the corner of the door into Mikey Mikey’s apartment, he glimpsed the man swan-dive into the green light with his hands out before him in a choking motion. Expecting some kind of scrap, Grant was dazzled by a flashing light and sparks that spat in all directions like an electrical fire. He instinctively backed away then, at the warning sound of a hiss and crackle, he stumbled back down the stairs.

  He could sense what was coming next. And, just as he reached the second floor landing, a loud explosion behind him didn’t disappoint. He didn’t turn around to see Mikey Mikey’s apartment engulfed in flames, nor did he see the green light totally engulfed by swirling balls of orange, but he could feel the searing heat on his back and saw a July 4th’s worth of sparks in every grubby window.

  Grant completed the rest of his journey three steps at a time and was out the door and across the street with head spinning and nerves slapping each other within ten sharp breaths. As his body struggled to calm itself, he looked up at Mikey Mikey’s flat. A terrified face was pressed against the window. But it was no one he recognized. It was followed by another and another. Men, women, even a young boy. It wasn’t until the fire burst through the roof that he saw one he knew. It was Jane Willmott. In the flame’s brilliant light, he could make out her face plainly, a perfect match for the photograph he’d been carrying around with him. She mouthed the words, “Help me” moments before the entire top floor of the building shattered into a million pieces and rained down upon the neighborhood.

  Grant scurried to his car. On the drive back to the office, he filled in the time by trying to come up with a story he could tell Missy Hobbs. He drew a blank worthy of Mikey Mikey’s face.

  THE END.

  UPON A CANDLE by Sara Green

  The windows were rolled up, but Andy Reddick pressed the button again. Just in case, he thought as he looked at all four car door windows to insure their seal. Then he laid back in the driver seat, almost all the way back, but just enough where he could see over the dashboard—just beneath the top of the steering wheel.

  It wasn’t ideal, but it was all the view he needed. He could see the black front door of the beige house across the street. And all he needed to do was see when it opened. Then he’d be certain that the game was up.

  Andy would sit in his mother’s car and watch his uncle, aunt, and cousins exit Andy’s home. They’d abandon their prank and come looking for Andy—or at least go home, so that Andy could go back inside and play with his toys in peace.

  He’d hated his cousins since they ruined his ninth birthday party. All Andy had wanted was his friends from school, but his mother had insisted upon inviting all his family. He hated his extended family. They were always trying to tease him. So of course, when Andy got off the bus and noticed his relatives’ van parked outside the house, he dreaded going in.

  But it was drizzling, and Andy’s mother hated when Andy got wet outside. There wasn’t much to do outside anyway. He had a thirty feet by thirty feet backyard that mostly consisted of his father’s Weber Grill, old rusting patio furniture, and a shed that was filled with cardboard boxes that his parents always intended to recycle, but never bothered to take to the recycling center—it was too much to leave on the sidewalk, and the trash guys always tossed all the recyclables into the back of their truck with the rest of trash. Recycling was an illusion. Something adults did to make the neighbors think they were good people.

  All trash went to the same place—out of sight.

  Four a fifth grader, Andy prided himself in how much he already knew about the ways of the world. Though he had only bragged before, he was sure he could drive a car and thought of taking his mom’s car and driving downtown to the mall to kill a few hours and really make his relatives apologetic for pranking him when he got home from school. They’d be real sorry when they couldn’t find Andy.

  Of course, it would also prove that their prank worked.

  That’s not something Andy wanted to admit.

  They’d laugh and tease him and no matter what Andy said or actually did. They’d say, “He was so scared he took his mom’s car and drove as far away as he could!”

  Andy’s hand still shook. He planned to tell anyone who noticed that the drizzle was cold and he was just shivering. But that wasn’t the case. They had scared him. Scared him real good.

  He wanted to turn the engine on and blast the heat—as if he had started believe his own lie.

  But that would give away his hiding place.

  So he sat, waited, and shivered.

  His heart was still fluttering in his chest, his breath still rapid. He clenched the steering wheel determined to make them pay. How could he top what they just did though?

  He had to go sicker, and viler.

  Maybe he could do it right then and there and then it would have more effect because their initial reaction would be that it happened because they tried to scare him. And then they’d know Andy wasn’t scared because he pranked them back immediately, tenfold as people say.

  If they were going to lie about his house like shredded corpses, fake bloody skin dangling on the bannister, an eyeball perched upon picture frame, a severed leg dangling from the spinning ceiling fan, and there were the teeth. The teeth that crunched beneath Andy’s feet as he had entered the bloody scene.

  They’d gone to extra effort in this attempt, and if Andy hadn’t already sworn to hate them for the rest of his life (because they ruined his 9th birthday party) he’d applaud them for the thoughtfulness of the details. But it was the details that made it so obvious to Andy that it was a prank.

  If he’d simply come home and discovered his uncle unresponsive on the reclined, drool hanging off the side and maybe bloody tears or a bloody nose, then Andy would’ve really worried.

  No, the fake blood and gore that they decorated the foyer with was not enough to scare Andy Reddick. It was the dark figure they’d put at the top of the stairs. The one whose face was hidden by the angle of the stairs and the ceiling.

  In his memory, that figure was smiling, biting their tongue to withstand an outburst of laughter. Ominous as they were, it was likely just a dummy, for it didn’t move at all. Then again, Andy hadn’t given it a chance. Andy ran the second he saw it and his stupid brain connected the dots the way his relatives had plotted. Yes, it was supposed to look like this dark figure had murdered his uncle, aunt, and cousins. But what was it supposed to mean that it was standing upstairs. Had it gone up there to kill his mother as well? That was the story their prank sought to convey.

  Andy laughed at the ideas that came to him on how he would have improved it—made it a real horror show. One that would’ve brought him to tears if he’d really seen it.

  There in his foyer, there’d be the cute curly haired blonde that sat in front of him in class. She’d be screaming her head off—because it was literally off her body. Her neck would be a gushing fountain. She’d be begging Andy for help. And that’s when Andy would turn and see all his classmates, butchered in the formal living room. The sound of a wood chipper roaring to life in the kitchen as more body parts showered his mother’s expensive furniture (it was only for guests after all).

  Oh, and Andy would’ve employed the bus driver as well. She was scary enough on her own, just by the way she drove with her eyes glaring back in the rearview mirror at all the kids. If she had charged in behind Andy he would crapped his pants and pissed a hole through the floor.

  But his relatives couldn’t be counted on those kinds of details, that kind of thoughtfulness. They never brought him birthday presents. Half the time they came they’d break one of his toys and Andy’s stupid mom would say, “No biggie, he doesn’t play with that one much anymore anyway.”

  Andy punched the steering wheel. He’d miss the horn just enough that it didn’t startle the neighborhood. But he st
ill hit it and it let out a weak ‘ERNT.’

  “Come check on me already!” Andy said as the front door refused to open. Andy had slammed it behind him. So what now? Did they expect him to come back and laugh about it? If their prank was so clever, they should be barreling out onto the tiny lawn, laughing and calling Andy to return.

  Why wasn’t that happening?

  Come on already!

  Andy crossed his arms. He was not marching back into that house just to have them try to scare him again. That’s exactly why they hadn’t come out. Because they knew their prank was too over the top and Andy would realize that and march back in to laugh at them. That’s when they’d strike him again.

  Oh the audacity of them! Andy had just learned that word and he repeated it over and over, not so much because he was trying to remember it for a vocabulary quiz, but because he thought he was smart enough to use it.

  Just like he was smart enough to see through their stupid plan.

  Andy laughed and closed his eyes. He would take a nap, he pretended.

  A dog barked. Not just once, but continued to park. It was nearing Andy and his mother’s car. Andy pried one eye open to see the owner of the dog tugging at its leash, trying to reel the animal back in. But as brave as the dog’s bark was, it was pulling its owner away from Andy’s home.

  Andy sat up and watched a little longer, expecting this incident to pry his relative from their scene. But as the dog and the owner jogged off further down the street, there was no sign of life from Andy’s home.

  Andy slouched back into the seat and peered between the top of the steering wheel and the dash.

  He had to come up with a great way to get them back.

  What he really wanted to do was sneak around the back of the house and sift through the shed in the backyard for his father’s grass trimmer. Then he’d charge into the house screaming and accidentally slicing up his relatives as they came back to life in the nick of time. Perhaps, Andy thought with a devilish grin, the best retaliation of all would be to play along.

  Andy had heard of stories where pranks had gone wrong. Well there was the Boy Who Cried Wolf, but there were other ones where a man with a loaded gun was given a surprise party, but thought he had thieves in his house and shot his family and friends before they lights came on. Who would blame Andy for fighting back after witnessing such a grisly scene?

  Andy wrapped his fingers around the steering wheel and pulled himself up again. He was trying to think which neighbor could be duped into overreacting with him, a neighbor with a gun…

  No. that would never work. As Andy noted, the gore was over the top and no way what a real massacre would look like. It was too staged, like the killer had time to think about the composition of his redecorating. If Andy had spent longer in the foyer he would’ve noticed the blood was too sweet smelling, and the leg was a foam Halloween prop. Any adult would notice that too.

  Only Andy could inflict carnage and claim afterwards that he thought it was real.

  They’d believe him. He was just an 11 year old boy.

  But Andy wasn’t really a killer. Otherwise he would’ve actually killed them long ago. He’d probably mess up and hurt himself, and that thought was enough to cool his jets. But he was still angry, almost as angry as when they ruined his 9th birthday party.

  Almost as…

  Then, as if clouds parted and the sun was revealed to have been waiting there this whole time, the memory of his 9th birthday party returned and he remembered what he wished when he blew out his candles. All his candles went out when he wished it, all of them, before he blew them. He’d wished, ‘if they ever come into my house again they will be torn to shreds.”

  How could Andy forget? He had dreamed about it in the days and weeks after, and sometimes when he was in school or on the toilet. That prank was not from their imagination. It was his. He even had imagined the shit that stained the walls that his mother would have to clean up later.

  He was still only 9 years old back then, of course he believed a birthday wish could come true, but in the two years since he knew it was just something adults told kids to do so that even if they didn’t get the present they wanted they could believe that later their birthday wish would come true.

  Later.

  Like now later.

  Andy circled his short term memory banks. Was the eyeball glossy from eye fluid or because it was plastic dipped in oil? Was that leg dangling from the ceiling fan really foam, or latex, or was it indeed flesh and bone and blood?

  All that blood.

  Andy gasped. I wished this!

  Andy jumped at the sound of a tapping on the car door window.

  Tap. Tap.

  The sound of metal on glass.

  A thin blade, an effort to not break the glass or even scratch. But the gloved knuckles could’ve done the same thing if there wasn’t an effort to let the blood from the blood drip down the window.

  Andy slapped the door locks, just for good measure—he’d already locked them.

  Next to the car stood the same dark figure that had stood at the top of the stairs. Andy recognized the shiny belt buckle and the shade of black of the clothing. But crouched down in the driver’s seat he could see more this time. He could see that smiling face. But it had an unexpected expression. One of bewilderment. Even though the man wore a grinning mask, behind it were the eyes of someone who was confused, perhaps even offended.

  “Andy?” the man said. “What’s wrong?”

  Andy screamed and fumbled the keys like he swore he’d never do every time he watched a horror film. Stupid people always fumble their keys. That’s just the movies. But here, it was, really happening to him. He’s was about to be the dumb blonde bimbo.

  “Get away from me!”

  “Andy, wait. You wished this, didn’t you? I thought I had all the details just right.”

  “Don’t kill me!”

  “Andy. Stop. I don’t want to grant that wish yet. I know you have wished yourself dead. Most people do. But those are not the wishes I come to fulfil.” The man laid his head on the window, forearms against the glass, he rocked his head from side to side, like a child against an aquarium.

  The scared fish was Andy, and he had pinned himself against the passenger side door. He could try and open it and run, but he had a feeling it would be foolhardy. He’d trip.

  It was broad daylight, at some point someone would see the killer tormenting Andy. At some point someone would save the day.

  “You see, I am devoid of imagination, but I am blessed with skill. A technician of fantasy. I hear the wishes and desires of children, for they are the ones who deserve to shape this world. They are the ones who will grow into it, not the adults who have half or less their lives less, and have given up on making their dreams a reality. It is you that I wish to listen to. Instruct me, Andy. Make me carry out your will.”

  “Go away! I want you to go away!”

  The man shook his head. “That’s not what I hear. You are frightened, yes, but just in this moment. Please, come out of the car, and we can go and spread your fancy through the town.”

  Andy would hate to be seen now. He’d hate it even more if this were some sick prank. But something in him told him it wasn’t. Something in him remembered this man. He saw him upon the refrigerator years ago. He remembered, all dressed in black, and a smiling mask and a round belt buckle, and… the knife. Andy remember he’d told his mother a lie: “He is making peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.”

  No. Andy had drawn blood on that knife and he had imagined this man as a killer, one who would only kill who Andy wished. Had he dreamed that? Had he tapped into some forbidden realm, or was this just another wish fulfilled?

  Andy didn’t care anymore. He wished that he wasn’t afraid of the man.

  And that wish came true.

  The car unlocked on its own—no, Andy used the remote on the key chain.

  Andy got out on his own and it wasn’t the man’s hand that took Andy’s
, it was Andy’s that took the man by the hand and led him down the street. Down the street to where he knew that bus driver of his lived. Along the way there would be some of his classmates, too.

  Andy was only disappointed that his uncle, aunt, and cousins were already dead. Luckily, there were quite a few people he hated more. He’d work his way up to them.

  The man was having trouble keeping up with Andy. He skipped a few steps trying to keep pace. Andy was quite determined now and the face behind the mask was smiling… bigger than he was on his mask.

  “Now, Andy, there’s no rush,” the man said. “You had some ideas about a wood chipper that I rather liked. Where would we find one of those machines?”

  THE END.

  KNOCK by Kenneth O’Brien

  I was on my way to becoming a hopeless addict within days disembarking from the steamer in Shanghai. That was the how I came to first encounter Indignatio in a Chinese opium den. I caught sight of him through a cloud of scented smoke and bead-curtain doorway. He was stretched across a bed of silk cushions, deep in conversation with one of the local users. Despite the changes brought about by the passage of time, I recognized him immediately and made my way across the den in order to introduce myself. He studied me for a moment, smiled and dismissed his companion from our company.

  ‘You know who I am?’ His eyes narrowed in suspicion.

  ‘Of course,’ I replied.

  He was an overweight Englishman with piercing blue eyes that still twinkled with a mischievousness that belied the onset of his years. A smooth bald head and a small, neatly trimmed, silver beard contrasted with a heavily wrinkled face and a sharp nose, on which rested pince-nez. He was dressed in that typical British Empire combination of fawn slacks and a white, linen shirt with the sleeves rolled up to the elbows. He seemed oblivious to the fact that the marks on his arms revealed to the entire world his narcotic habit. But who knows? Perhaps he wished it so? His history was already well known to all and sundry. Through the years the self-styled magus had become infamous for his mixing of the Occult with drugs and orgies and had long ago discarded his birth name for Indignatio - something more in keeping with his sense of destiny I presumed. In this part of the globe, being a member of the British Empire held a certain level of status but back home, where he had been associated with many scandals and rumours in various Fleet Street publications, his stock had fallen and he gradually slipped from public perception. He was now viewed as nothing more than just another notorious confidence trickster with a predilection for self-publicity, sexual deviancy and drug abuse.